Phone-records fight hinges on 1979 ruling

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Thirty-four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the numbers someone dials on a telephone are not private information and can be seized by the government without a warrant.

“A person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties’’ such as the telephone company, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in Smith vs. Maryland, a case that is suddenly back in the spotlight with revelations of widespread government surveillance of telecommunications data.

A federal court ruling, disclosed last week, upheld federal agents’ seizure of millions of domestic phone records from Verizon Business Network, apparently at three-month intervals for the past seven years.

Although the phone company cases have been litigated behind a wall of secrecy — in closed-door proceedings, with only government lawyers participating, followed by confidential rulings — the leaked Verizon decision showed that the National Security Agency sought the records under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.

That provision of the post-9/11 law allows agents to obtain documents that are “relevant’’ to an authorized investigation of international terrorism or espionage.

An American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, filed Tuesday, will test the scope of that law, as well as the continued viability of the 1979 Smith vs. Maryland ruling in a world of rapidly changing technology. To read more about the suit and experts’ views of the issues, click here.